Chess for Android Move Coach on E-Boards

[abik]

All boards will work. For e-One it works already with Aart's SW, and prob. after DGT releases their new api to him too.
The boards already on market for some time, arent a problem at all...Aart did a great job.

Thank you for your kind words!

[mvanthoor]

The price range for electronic boards goes from 180€ (Presale pice for Millennium e-One) or 249€ for a DGT Pegasus to 775€ for a Millennium Supreme Tournament 55 or around this for a DGT wood board (depending on your choice of wood, pieces types).

There is also Certabo boards with an advantage of being able to play other board games too (like othello).
On low price segment i would recommend you an e-One, but please take into account, its release date is end of jan.
If y dont want to wait, y might buy the dgt pegasus , but i know why i recommend something else;-)

Wood boards are really nice, but y need to spend alot more money. If y need LEDs here, y cant buy a wood DGT one (only Millennium offers leds).

All boards will work. For e-One it works already with Aart's SW, and prob. after DGT releases their new api to him too.
The boards already on market for some time, arent a problem at all...Aart did a great job.

You see, the electronic chess board market is in flow. There are alot of choices for the customer, which is great.

Yours, Jürgen

Millennium is way too expensive. The Tournament board costs around €800 in the Netherlands. Then you'll have to add the chess link to actually be able to use the board (€150), and a poweradapter if it's not included. You don't have a clock. A Walnut / Timeless DGT board (€409) + DGT Pi (€275) costs €684 for the cheapest option. Then you do have a clock.

Certabo boards are nice because they offer a smaller size. The small boards start at around €450, without pieces. They also offer LED's. I always wished DGT would make a small 35x35 board for home use for a quick game (getting out a massive 55x55 board can be a hassle if you don't have the room to permanently keep it on a table). Certabo also has the DaVinci chess module for about €150, which is a raspberry pi in a custom case, with a touch screen. (I suspect it's PicoChess with a custom GUI on top; you definitely can replace engines.) Compare that to Millenium, who are still selling dedicated computers running software from the 90's. Instead of paying €600-700 for an Exclusive, I'd much rather have a Certabo+DaVinci or a DGT board+DGT-Pi for about the same price.

Because of the small size, the Certabo boards keep tempting me.

The one thing I find to be a pity is that I can't find a nice case which can hold both an RPI and a battery HAT-addition. Even if you use a DGT-PI, you still need to connect that to a powerbank or the wall-outlet. It would be nice if the clock, pi, and a big battery could be one unit so you just have the board and the clock.

[Chessqueen]

How much is that beautiful E board, that you are showing. Does it cost less than $300.00 US Dollars [/size]?

The board shown in the picture is the Supreme Millennium Tournament 55 eboard, which is, as stated above too, listed for around 799 euros currently. The LEDs are nicely worked into the wood and do not distract from the game at all (both when moving pieces, since you cannot feel them, as well as visually, since you hardly notice them when not lit).

Thanks, for the information. They should build a board that keep track of all the moves and at the end of the game send it to a printer and print the annotated game, very useful for World chess championship and top GMs games.

[PeterO]

Hi Chessqueen,

with the DGT Pegasus you can play online games (chess.com, LiChess) OR like a normal chessboard with another person. All the games are saved in the app. You can send it to another app to analyse it - or on your PC to analyse it - or print the game. No problem.

Peter

[adams161]

I want to ask the head admin, mattuc, to do another for wood board support on FICS specifically if it's true as i think that that board could be made to play on FICS since the app connects to FICS. It seems nobody i talk to on FICS seems to realize there is a way to play with such boards on FICS.

Absolutely! One of the reasons I actually added ICS/FICS support to Chess for Android was exactly because of users' request to be able to play with an online service using a real wooden chessboard! Please feel free to point them to one of my instructional videos on the topic as well. Perhaps I should make a separate one for just connecting to the servers using an eboard.

It wont be immediately, but i've started the conversation with FICS and the person who is updating https://www.freechess.org/interfaces.html , and he is interested in adding Chess for Android and maybe in general on the page highlighting electronic board support. As he says below:

By the way, BabasChess also supports electronic chess boards. There might
even be another interface that does too. I'm not sure. This is a nice
feature, and would be a good way to help promote any interface or app that
supports it.

There has been a first pass updating that page and now my Diamond Chess Online client is on it, but more is going to be done first half of this year, probably first quarter with the FICS download page. And it will help with a web update to make FICS electronic board support show up better in search.

[abik]

and he is interested in adding Chess for Android and maybe in general on the page highlighting electronic board support.

Thanks for bringing this to their attention again. I interacted with the FICS team a few years back when I added client support in Chess for Android, and they were very kind and helpful. I also thought they said they would add my app on their website, so it is a bit sad not to see it yet but hopefully resolved soon now. Thanks again.

[adams161]

and he is interested in adding Chess for Android and maybe in general on the page highlighting electronic board support.

Thanks for bringing this to their attention again. I interacted with the FICS team a few years back when I added client support in Chess for Android, and they were very kind and helpful. I also thought they said they would add my app on their website, so it is a bit sad not to see it yet but hopefully resolved soon now. Thanks again.

Kind of a strange situation, no one was updating it. I did a screen shot of the page as it has existed prior to this update here http://www.diamond-chess.com/fics-inter ... -25-21.png

As you can see on that page until about a month ago it was last updated sept 9, 2013. The tech admin who worked on the web had been absent but mattuc the head admin after i mailed about how to get an update a few times said he actualy had access and one thing lead to another and he updated. He doesn't really know HTML i think which is why he had not tried before but when he looked found it was not so hard to edit. It's a fairly simple page, i've looked at the code.

but things are turning around on fics. My Diamond client is growing from 2% of the server to 3 and i see more growth with more new clients. They raised 2 years funds to run fics in a donation drive when they were only trying for one. The tech admins all recently united to do a server move to new computer and got all main services like new account registration restored. And we are getting web page updates now it looks like. One argument i made on the importance is it was making apps about fics harder to show up in search or app store searches related to fics.

[adams161]

and he is interested in adding Chess for Android and maybe in general on the page highlighting electronic board support.

Thanks for bringing this to their attention again. I interacted with the FICS team a few years back when I added client support in Chess for Android, and they were very kind and helpful. I also thought they said they would add my app on their website, so it is a bit sad not to see it yet but hopefully resolved soon now. Thanks again.

As mentioned till December the Fics download page had not been updated since 2013 and this is what the page looked like on 11-25-21 and has a last update date.
http://www.diamond-chess.com/fics-inter ... -25-21.png

Mattuc the Head Admin wrote last night:

The update is coming along quite well.  It might be done sooner than I had
thought.  I need more details about Chess for Android, but those details can
be easily added in later on.

By details, I assume he means the interface comparison questions like does it have engine analysis support on fics, variant support ( partial full or none), auto save game, premove, how many piece sets, and some other questions about customization that it think Chess for Android is going to be no on like custom buttons.

But we discussed which boards it supports and you list 3 on the play store page, millennium DGT and carb something so I assume that will be all there. And we hashed out it’s important to say you support blue tooth from the board or a utility like chess link. I assume not a cable to the android decide ever. This type of information would be in the description below.

[adams161]

and he is interested in adding Chess for Android and maybe in general on the page highlighting electronic board support.

I also thought they said they would add my app on their website

They did do a news item, which is visible to users on login if they can see the console connect screen in the interface, when you released on FICS in 2019. The news item is still up. Users who haven't read it yet still see it on login. Others users can see all current news items if they type news in a console in their app. This is a good way to reach members as well though it has no search engine presence and not all interfaces show a console or make it easy to see immediatly. But i'll post it below. I was concerned it made no mention of Electronic Boards.

Now on the web that is definitely going to be fixed I believe now based on mattuc's comments i posted in my prior post on this thread as he says it's nearing completion, on how the web page update is coming along. As mentioned before, this freechess.org/interfaces.html page had not been updated since 2013 till this December. I've been kind of pushing for an update and broke through when guy who wanted to assist, mattuc, realized he didn't need an absent admin and could with more limited tech knowledge, take a stab at it himself.

here is the news that is currently on fics since first half of 2019.

1633 (Tue, Apr 2) Chess for Android app can now connect to FICS.
The Chess for Android app is now able to connect users to FICS. If you have an android phone, you might want to give it a try. It is available here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... roid.chess More info is
\ available here: http://aartbik.com/android_fics.php
Posted by mattuc.

[abik]

But we discussed which boards it supports and you list 3 on the play store page, millennium DGT and carb something so I assume that will be all there. And we hashed out it’s important to say you support blue tooth from the board or a utility like chess link. I assume not a cable to the android decide ever. This type of information would be in the description below.

Thanks for your continuing efforts getting all the information right. This is much appreciated.

Note that currently, Chess for Android supports the Millennium electronic chessboards (both BLE and classic bluetooth), the Certabo electronic chessboards (both USB and bluetooth, but also for Reversi and Checkers; the latter may be added to the online server protocol at some point), and the DGT electronic chessboards (both USB and bluetooth, and soon also the latest DGT Pegasus, which is BLE). The client to ICC and FICS is rather simple by design, probably one of the minimalistic choices out there.